Luisa Omielan: Am I Right Ladies? Edinburgh

Coming up with a follow-up show is a bit like rock’n’roll’s Second Album Syndrome: you get a lifetime to build up your first hour of jokes, and just 12 months to put together the next one. It’s even tougher when your debut is a comedy phenomenon. Luisa Omielan’s What Would Beyoncé Do?! – a warts-and-all comparison of her life with that of Mrs Jay Z – took her from the free fringe to the West End and Montreal. Its all-singing, all-dancing mix of confessional comedy and feelgood joie de vivre captivated audiences and made this previously unknown comic a hot property among producers. Am I Right Ladies?! offers a delightful combination of romantic longing and self-possessed empowerment, as Omielan continues to bemoan her lack of success in love, while refusing to change anything about herself to conform to society’s beauty norms.

Laughing Horse At The Counting House, Sat & Sun

Nish Kumar: Ruminations On The Nature Of Subjectivity, Edinburgh

A lot of the artier, more envelope-pushing comics on the fringe go through agonies trying to work out ways of politely discouraging the more lagered-up and loutish festivalgoers from attending (and occasionally ruining) their shows. Nish Kumar seems to have solved the problem with his title alone, which looks sure to put off all those who can’t stomach the more cerebral end of stand-up. This new show sees plenty more of his characteristic outside-the-box thinking that he honed as one half of The Gentlemen Of Leisure, as he rips into Asian comics who pander to their audiences’ racial prejudices, bemoans the base-level creativity of the most successful American sitcoms, and openly critiques his own pretensions to success. It’s bold and intriguing stuff that seems set to take his already promising career to a whole new level.

Pleasance Courtyard, Sat & Sun

Tim Key: Single White Slut, Edinburgh

There are plenty of comedians who will spend the entire month of August tormented by the desperate hope that they will somehow manage to sneak on to the shortlist for the Edinburgh comedy award. Those comics who’ve already won the damn thing can afford to take life a little easier, since one of the rules is you can’t win it twice; previous laureates (and there are plenty of them around at this year’s fringe, from 1991 winner Frank Skinner to last year’s victor Bridget Christie) can sit on their laurels. Tim Key won the award in 2009, and has spent the time since then endlessly polishing his own idiosyncratic comic art. He’s now back with this, the fourth in a seemingly never-ending series of Slut-entitled shows (following The Slut In The Hut, The Slutcracker and Masterslut). Each show has featured some extraordinary staging, some mindboggling visuals and plenty of the most peculiar poetry ever recited on stage. Expect more of the delightful same here.